Fertile Ground

Feminism's emphasis on birth control is challenged in a study which reveals the masculine and mechanistic assumptions underlying arguments for birth control and abortion, and the belief that women's freedom comes from control of their bodies and their fertility. Writing as an ecofeminist, not as an anti-abortionist, she argues that the control of fertility denigrates women's bodies and exploitation of the earth, and that the West's preoccupation with population control in the Third World is both racist and imperialist.